PS4417G: Special Topics in Political Psychology Course Description Course Text Course Assessment
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PS4417G: Special Topics in Political Psychology Department of Political Science – Western University, Winter 2020 Wednesday 1:30pm-3:30pm, SSC 4255 Instructor: Dr. Mathieu Turgeon Email: [email protected] Office hours: Tuesday from 10am-12pm or by appointment Course description The field of political psychology is vast and cuts through many subfields of political science. The focus in this course is about how theories of psychology apply to explain people’s political at- titudes and behaviours. In particular, the course is about how people receive, process, and use information they receive from their environment, interactions with others, the news media, and political elites to develop, change or maintain their political attitudes and make political decisions. Topics to be explored include candidate evaluation and choice, political knowledge and misinfor- mation, media effects, political polarization, and racial prejudice. Students will also be introduced to basic notions of the experimental design, a requisite to understanding the work produced in political psychology. Course text The required text for this course is: Druckman, J. N., Green, D. P., Kuklinski, J. H., & Lupia, A. (Eds.). 2011. Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Political Science. Cambridge University Press. Other readings are available electronically through Western Libraries and the course’s OWL site. Course assessment Students will be assessed in many different ways, including class participation, reading quizzes, short essays, and a final take-home exam. • Class participation (12%): students will be responsible to sign up for leading class discussion at least three (3) times during the semester. • 3 reading quizzes each worth 6%: I expect students to do all the required readings. To ensure that students keep up with the readings, I will randomly apply four reading quizzes during the semester. Students are required to take a minimum of three of the four quizzes, but can take all four. In that case, the three highest grades will be recorded. • 2 short essays each worth 20%: Students are required to produce two essays of about 1250 words each in response to two prompts. The first prompt will be distributed on February 5 and the second on March 4. The first essay is due in class on March 4 and the second on April 1. Essays are to be printed. No electronic copies will be accepted. No late essay will be accepted. • Final take-home exam (30%): Students will be given a cumulative final take-home exam on April 1 to be turned in by 5pm on April 3. The exam will consist of six short answer questions. Exams are to be printed. No electronic copies will be accepted. No late exam will be accepted. I will be in my office until 5pm on April 3 to receive your exam. 1 Topics and readings Week #1 (January 8): Course introduction Review of syllabus and class organization. Week #2 (January 15): Introduction to Political Psychology 1. Krosnick et al. 2010. “The Psychological Underpinnings of Political Behavior” In S. T. Fiske et al., eds., Handbook of Social Psychology. 5th Edition, Wiley. Suggested/Graduate students readings: Sears, D. O. 1987. “Political Psychology.” Annual Review of Psychology 38: 229-58. Simon, Herbert A. 1985. “Human Nature in Politics: The Dialogue of Psychology with Polit- ical Science.” American Political Science Review 79: 293-304. Week #3 (January 22): Experimental Political Science 1. Druckman, J. N., Green, D. P., Kuklinski, J. H., & Lupia, A. (Eds.). 2011. Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Political Science. Cambridge University Press. Chapters 1-3. Suggested/Graduate students readings: Druckman, J. N., Green, D. P., Kuklinski, J. H., & Lupia, A. (Eds.). 2011. Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Political Science. Cambridge University Press. Chapters 4-9. Week #4 (January 29): Political Decision-Making and Evaluations 1. Redlawsk, David P., and Richard R. Lau. 2013. “Behavioral Decision-Making.” In L. Huddy, D. O. Sears, and J. S. Levy, eds., The Oxford Handbok of Political Psychology. Oxford: Oxford Univeristy Press. 2. Druckman, J. N., Green, D. P., Kuklinski, J. H., & Lupia, A. (Eds.). 2011. Cambridge Hand- book of Experimental Political Science. Cambridge University Press. Chapter 13: “Candidate Impressions and Evaluations.” Suggested/Graduate students readings: Quattrone, George A., and Amos Tversky. 1988. “Contrasting Rational and Psychological Analyses of Political Choice.” American Political Science Review 82: 719-36. Popkin, Samuel L. 1991. The Reasoning Voter, Chapters 1 and 4. University of Chicago Press. Week #5 (February 5): Online and Memory-Based Information Processing 1. Lodge, Milton. et al. 1989. “An Impression-Driven Model of Candidate Evaluation.” Ameri- can Political Science Review 83:399-419. 2. Druckman, J. N., Green, D. P., Kuklinski, J. H., & Lupia, A. (Eds.). 2011. Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Political Science. Cambridge University Press. Chapter 11: “Conscious and unconscious information processing with implications for experimental political science.” 3. Hayes, Danny and Mathieu Turgeon. 2010. “A Matter of Distinction: Candidate Polarization and Information Processing in election Campaigns.” American Politics Research 38: 165-192. Suggested/Graduate students readings: Wyer and Srull. 1989. “Human Cognition in its Social Context.” Psychological Review 93: 322-359. Kim, Young M. and Kelly Garrett. 2011. “Online and Memory-based: Revisiting the Rela- tionship Between Candidate Evaluation Processing Models.” Political Behavior 34: 345-368. 2 Week #6 (February 12): Heuristics and Cues 1. Tversky, Amos, and Daniel t. Kahneman. 1974. “Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases.” Science 185: 1124-31. 2. Lupia, Arthur. 1994. “Shortcuts versus Encyclopedias: Information and Voting Behavior in California Insurance Reform Elections.” American Political Science Review 88: 63-76. 3. Kuklinski, James. H., Paul J. Quirk, Jennifer Jerit, and Robert F. Rich. 2001. “The Political Environment and Citizen Competence.” American Journal of Political Science, 45: 410-424. Suggested/Graduate students readings: Bullock, John G. 2011. “Elite Influence on Public Opinion in an Informed Electorate.” Ameri- can Political Science Review 105: 496-515. Dancey, Logan and G. Sheagley. 2013. “Heuristics Behaving Badly: Party Cues and Voter Knowledge.” American Journal of Political Science 57: 312-325. Week #7 (February 19): Reading week Week #8 (February 26): Motivated Reasoning, Political Knowledge, and Misin- formation 1. Taber, Charles S. and Milton Lodge. 2006. “Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Polit- ical Beliefs.” American Journal of Political Science 50: 755-769. 2. Iyengar, Shanto., and Kyu S. Hahn. 2009. “Red Media, Blue Media: Evidence of Ideological Selectivity in Media Use.” Journal of Communication 59: 19-39. 3. Druckman, J. N., Green, D. P., Kuklinski, J. H., & Lupia, A. (Eds.). 2011. Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Political Science. Cambridge University Press. Chapter 12: “Political Knowl- edge.” 4. Kuklinski, James H., Paul J. Quirk, Jennifer Jerit, David Schwieder, and Robert F. Rich. 2000. “Misinformation and the Currency of citizenship.” Journal of Politics 62: 585-598. Suggested/Graduate students readings: Lord, Charles. G., Lee Ross, and Mark R. Lepper. 1979. “Biased Assimilation and Attitude Polarization: The Effects of Prior Theories on Subsequently Considered Evidence.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37: 2098-2109. Cohen, Geoffrey L., Joshua Aronson, and Claude M. Steele. 2000. “When Beliefs Yield to Ev- idence: Reducing Biased Evaluation by Affirming the Self.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 26: 1151-1164. Taber, Charles S., Damon Cann, and Simona Kucsova. 2009. “The Motivated Processing of Political Arguments.” Political Behavior 31: 137-155. Week #9 (March 4): Media Effects 1. Druckman, J. N., Green, D. P., Kuklinski, J. H., & Lupia, A. (Eds.). 2011. Cambridge Hand- book of Experimental Political Science. Cambridge University Press. Chapter 14: “Media and Politics.” 2. Nelson, Thomas E., et al. 1997. “Media Framing of a Civil Liberties Conflict and Its Effect on Tolerance.” American Political Science Review 91: 567-584. 3. Druckman, James. 2004. “Political Preference Formation: Competition, Deliberation, and the (Ir)relevance of Framing.” American Political Science Review 98: 671-686. Suggested/Graduate students readings: Tversky, Amos, and Daniel Kahneman. 1981. “The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice.” Science 211: 453-58. Chong, Dennis, and James N. Druckman. 2007. “Framing Public Opinion in Competitive Democracies.” American Political Science Review 101: 637-55. 3 Week #10 (March 11): Racial Priming 1. Gilliam Jr., F. D. and S. Iyengar. 2000. “Prime Suspects: The Influence of Local Television News on the Viewing Public.” American Journal of Political Science 44: 560-573. 2. Tesler, Michael. 2012. “The Spillover of Racialization into Health Care: How President Obama Polarized Public Opinion by Racial Attitudes and Race.” American Journal of Polit- ical Science 56: 690-704. 3. Huber, Gregory A., and John S. Lapinski. 2006. “The ’Race Card’ Revisited: Assessing Racial Priming in Policy Contests.” American Journal of Political Science 50: 421-40. Suggested/Graduate students readings: Mendelberg, Tali. 2008. “Racial Priming Revived.” Perspectives on Politics 6: 109-23. Mendelberg, Tali. 2008. “Racial Priming: Issues in Research Design and Interpretation.” Perspectives on Politics 6: 135-40. Huber, Gregory A., and John S. Lapinski. 2008. “Testing the Implicit-Explicit